In what seems like an endless string of stories lately which should be surprising but aren’t, the latest is this from Quin Hillyer, writing in the Washington Times – namely, that the same NAACP which is spending its time playing the race card from the bottom of the deck against the Tea Party movement is in bed with the New Black Panther Party.

Or at least it sure seems that way, given that while the U.S. Civil Rights Commission is investigating the Justice Department’s intentional dropping of the ball on the New Black Panthers case last year, it’s been uncovered that an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund was pressuring DOJ to drop the New Black Panther case.

Per the testimony of DOJ whistleblower J. Christian Adams to the Commission, as reprinted by Hillyer:

MR. BLACKWOOD:  During the decision making process about the Panther case, did you hear that anyone at the Department was consulting with any outside groups such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund?

MR. ADAMS:  Well, I did, but we were also consulting with outside groups.  We visited the Southern Poverty Law Center.  We visited the Anti-Defamation League and would have probably hired them as an expert in this case if it had gone forward.  Because of course the Black Panthers, they’re a militant, anti-Semitic group.  They’re not just black nationalists.  They hate Jews.  And the ADL has an extensive database on this organization.   

MR. BLACKWOOD:  But the — Your communications with the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center I assume were related to the substance of the case.

MR. ADAMS:  That’s correct.

MR. BLACKWOOD:  Do you know whether anybody was consulting as to whether to proceed or the merits of the case with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund?

MR. ADAMS:  Well, listen.  This is not firsthand.  But I was told by section management that NAACP members or staffers were talking with the Voting section attorney in March of 2009 and asking, “When is this case going to get dismissed” which, of course, is interesting to hear for the first time that someone’s even thinking about dismissing the case that you’re in the middle of building.  And that was — It seemed strange.  But it didn’t really give me much pause other than to think that’s a really strange request.

MR. BLACKWOOD:  Well, all press reports indicated a conversation between Kristen Clark of the Legal Defense Fund and a Laura Coates of the Department.  Who is Laura Coates?

MR. ADAMS:  She is a line attorney in the Voting section, no relation to Christopher Coates.

MR. BLACKWOOD:  And according to the press reports Laura Coates reported this contact, this conversation, with Kristen Clark of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund “to her superiors.”  Do you know whether that occurred?

MR. ADAMS:  I do.  And if Mr. Coates were able to comply with his subpoena and testify under oath I’m quite confident that he would be able to share the full details of those communications as conveyed to him.

MR. BLACKWOOD:  But you’re not in the position to do that.

MR. ADAMS:  Other than they existed and you accurately — and that I characterized them as a request as to when the case was going to be dismissed as conveyed to me by Mr. Coates.

Hillyer concludes:

Mr. Coates was the top attorney directly involved in building the case. After he was subpoenaed by the commission, the Justice Department summarily transferred him to South Carolina, which just so happens to be outside the commission’s statutory subpoena range. The department has repeatedly refused to compy with or enforce the commission’s subpoenas, even though federal law mandates that all federal agencies shall cooperate with the commission.

Anyway, if, as has been believably alleged, the NAACP attorney was lobbying or actively hinting to the new Obama appointees or their “friendlies” in the “career” ranks of DoJ that DoJ should drop the Black Panther case, it makes the NAACP’s charges of racism against Tea Partiers even more tendentious. These New Black Panthers, after all, are some of the most virulently racist people around. Witness, again, this video of one of them advocating “killing crakkas” and “kill[ing] they [sic] babies.”

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund sent a letter after the publication of Hillyer’s piece denying Adams’ allegations, which the lawyer in question, Kristen Clarke, had previously disputed. It also in the letter took pains to claim that it is an entirely separate organization from the NAACP and has been since 1957. Thus the reader is expected to deduce that after the legal defense fund bearing the same name as the “civil rights group” allegedly stood behind the New Black Panthers in the DOJ’s voter intimidation case against them, no relationship should be inferred upon the occurrence of the organization’s ridiculous smear of a diverse, massive and decentralized political movement as racist.

Because they’re two completely separate organizations, you see. And the NAACP-LDF never took up for the New Black Panther Party. And anyway, there’s no hypocrisy at work even if they did because both J. Christian Adams and the Tea Party people are conservatives and raaaaaaacist.

That the various tentacles of the NAACP should display such patently obvious intellectual bankruptcy is hardly a surprise given the recent spate of Hallmark card protests and attempted BP shakedowns emanating from its leadership. But that the Department of Justice is apparently taking direction from these people in discharging their duty (or, in fact, refusing to do so) is of special concern. If the members of the “civil rights movement” inside and outside DOJ believe race relations will be improved by elevating the New Black Panthers above the law while spreading false accusations and slurs on the Tea Party movement in a brazen attempt to mobilize African American turnout for a mid-term election in November, they stand to be disappointed with the results.